Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "PBD Podcast" channel.

  1. "What is it about Jews that makes them so successful?" One generalization one can (surprisingly) safely make about Jews, is they have more of a tendency than other cultures to hold bar mitzvahs. This is when a teenager is hauled up in front of everyone his parents want to impress, to prove that he's literate. (And can maybe sing a bit.) Compare this with other cultures, with rites-of-passage into manhood that involve successfully hunting a gazelle with a silver knife. (Where the gazelles get these silver knives, I'll never know.) Literacy is an incredibly important cultural asset -- you can learn from people you've never met, without taking up any of their time beyond an initial investment. There are probably other cultural assets you can point to, but this one has the advantage of being rather uncontroversial.
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  2. "We set up the neutrino detector" Isn't a neutrino detector supposed to be one of the most passive instruments humanity has ever built? The physics is pretty well understood. Wouldn't you need a significant power draw to make it a long-range weapon instead? I'll grant you that it's in a very out-of-the-way place, but cuts both ways -- any power source would have to be fairly obvious at ground level.
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  3. "Unfortunately there is a history of colonization among Christians" Yeah, and there's also a history of colonization among Muslims. It's instructive to compare the two, much like comparing the East African and West African slave trades.
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